Are All Processed Foods Bad for You? Dr. Will Cole Says It’s More Complicated

“Processed food” has become one of the biggest villains in nutrition.

Walk through a grocery store and you’ll see products advertising themselves as clean, natural, plant-based, organic and minimally processed.

Meanwhile, foods labeled “ultra-processed” are increasingly associated with poor health.

So should you simply stop eating anything that comes in a package?

Functional medicine practitioner Dr. Will Cole says it’s not that simple.

In a Heal Squad conversation with Maria Menounos, Cole discusses processed foods, meat, plant-based diets and the Netflix docuseries You Are What You Eat. His larger message is that nutrition headlines often leave out something important:

Context.

Not every food that qualifies as processed is nutritionally identical. Not every plant-based food is automatically healthy. And not every type of meat necessarily deserves to be placed in the same category.

Rather than choosing foods based solely on labels such as “vegan,” “processed” or “meat,” Cole argues that people should pay closer attention to what’s actually in the food and where it came from.

“Processed” Can Mean Very Different Things

Processing exists on a spectrum.

A food can be altered, packaged or prepared before you buy it and still contain recognizable ingredients.

That’s very different from a highly refined product filled with ingredients you wouldn’t normally use in your kitchen.

Cole says this distinction gets lost when all processed foods are treated as one category.

“There are better-for-you quote-unquote processed meats,” he says, pointing to factors such as ingredients, organic sourcing and third-party testing.

That doesn’t mean he recommends building a diet around processed meat.

He doesn’t.

But he also doesn’t think simply classifying something as “processed” tells you everything you need to know about whether it belongs in your diet.

Processed Meat Deserves Particular Attention

The conversation spends considerable time on processed meats such as bacon, hot dogs and cold cuts.

Cole is clear that he doesn’t advocate making processed meats a regular foundation of someone’s diet.

But he also pushes back against extending concerns about processed meat to every form of meat without considering differences in sourcing and production.

“I would argue [it’s] what we’ve done to the meat, not the meat inherently itself,” Cole says.

He points to questions such as:

What was the animal fed?

How was it raised?

What were its living conditions?

How was the meat produced?

Those questions, he argues, can make discussions about meat more nuanced than simply asking whether someone eats it.

Correlation Isn’t the Same as Causation

One of Cole’s biggest concerns about nutrition reporting is the difference between correlation and causation.

If researchers observe that people who eat more of a particular food also have higher rates of a disease, that’s an association.

It doesn’t automatically prove the food caused the disease.

Other behaviors may differ between the groups too.

Cole uses meat research as an example, noting that people who consume more meat in some observational studies may also differ in smoking, alcohol use, physical activity and other lifestyle factors.

Those additional variables can make it difficult to determine exactly what’s responsible for the observed health outcome.

That doesn’t mean associations should be ignored.

It means headlines such as “Food X causes Disease Y” can sometimes make research sound more definitive than the underlying study actually is.

A Vegan Label Doesn’t Automatically Make Something Healthy

The same critical thinking applies to plant-based foods.

Cole says someone eating a typical diet high in refined and heavily processed foods may see improvements after switching to a plant-based diet simply because they’ve removed many of those foods.

But that doesn’t necessarily prove that every vegan diet—or every vegan product—is optimal.

Maria describes experiencing this herself when she stopped eating meat.

She initially bought vegan burgers and other packaged meat substitutes. Eventually, she looked at the ingredient lists and realized she didn’t recognize many of the ingredients there either.

Her conclusion was simple:

Maybe the better goal wasn’t replacing one highly processed food with another.

Maybe it was eating more real food.

That’s a useful distinction for anyone standing in a grocery aisle.

“Plant-based” describes what a food doesn’t contain. It doesn’t necessarily tell you everything it does contain.

Food Quality May Matter as Much as the Category

Cole repeatedly returns to food quality.

When discussing animal foods, he favors higher-quality options such as wild-caught fish and grass-fed beef. He also discusses pasture-raised poultry and eggs rather than animals raised primarily on conventional feed.

But he acknowledges that food sourcing can quickly become overwhelming.

Fish raises concerns about contaminants.

Plant foods can raise concerns about pesticides or heavy metals.

Animal foods raise questions about feed and farming practices.

Packaged foods raise questions about ingredients.

Follow that thinking far enough and suddenly it feels as though there’s nothing left to eat.

Cole’s advice?

“Do the best you can.”

That’s an important message in a wellness culture that can make eating feel like a test you’re constantly failing.

When Healthy Eating Starts Creating Unhealthy Stress

There’s a term for an excessive preoccupation with eating “correctly” or “cleanly”: orthorexia.

Cole brings up the danger of becoming so obsessed with avoiding imperfect foods that the pursuit of health itself becomes stressful.

“You can find some obsessive orthorexic reason to not have anything under the sun,” he says.

That’s the paradox.

You’re trying to improve your health.

But every meal becomes another source of anxiety.

Is this organic?

Was it pasture-raised?

Does it contain seed oil?

What was the animal fed?

Does this fish have microplastics?

Was this plant sprayed?

Is this processed?

Cole’s philosophy in the interview is more pragmatic.

Make better choices when you can.

Pay attention to quality.

But don’t live in what he calls a “fear bubble” around food.

What About the Twin Diet Study?

The Netflix docuseries discussed in the interview follows a Stanford study involving identical twins assigned to vegan or omnivorous diets.

Cole says the twin design is interesting because genetically similar participants provide an opportunity to examine how diet and environment may influence health.

But he argues that the findings don’t justify a sweeping conclusion that vegan diets are simply “better.”

He points to limitations in the study and questions he believes remain unanswered, including differences in calorie intake and body composition.

His larger criticism is one that applies well beyond this particular study:

A study can produce an interesting result without answering every nutrition question.

When research reaches social media, documentaries and news headlines, nuance can disappear.

That’s why it’s worth asking what researchers actually measured—and what they didn’t.

The Best Diet May Not Have a Name

Cole doesn’t advocate a strict vegan diet for everyone, nor does he suggest loading every plate with meat.

His preferred approach is generally a balanced omnivorous diet emphasizing nutrient-dense foods, while acknowledging that individual needs, health conditions, genetics, ethics and religious beliefs may lead people to eat differently.

That’s an important departure from the diet wars that dominate wellness culture.

Vegan.

Carnivore.

Keto.

Paleo.

Low-fat.

Low-carb.

The label can become an identity.

But your body doesn’t know what diet team you’ve joined.

It responds to the nutrients, foods and overall pattern you’re actually consuming.

Your Genetics May Influence What Works for You

Cole also emphasizes what he calls bio-individuality.

Two people can eat the same food and respond differently.

He discusses genetic variants such as APOE4 as one factor that may influence how some people approach dietary fats and long-term health risk.

But he also warns against treating genetics as destiny.

Having a genetic risk factor doesn’t guarantee a particular outcome.

Genetics are one variable among many.

That’s another reason universal nutrition rules can become problematic.

The eating pattern that works well for one person may need modification for another based on health history, laboratory results, nutritional needs and other individual factors.

You Don’t Have to Eat Perfectly to Eat Better

Perhaps the most useful message in the conversation is that nutrition doesn’t have to be all-or-nothing.

Maria recalls advice from Alicia Silverstone about becoming an “aspiring vegetarian”—not necessarily eliminating meat completely, but simply eating less of it.

Cole similarly takes a pragmatic approach.

Higher-quality food when possible.

More whole foods.

Fewer highly refined foods.

Better sourcing when it’s accessible.

Variety.

And less obsession with achieving some impossible version of dietary purity.

That’s a much more sustainable question than:

What foods am I never allowed to eat again?

Try asking:

What could I eat more often—and what could I eat less often?

Don’t Let Nutrition Become Another Source of Fear

Food matters.

But so does your relationship with it.

At the beginning of the episode, Maria shares a quote from Cole that captures the larger point:

“No one way of eating will be sustainable if you don’t have a healthy relationship with yourself.”

That’s easy to forget when every week seems to bring another headline announcing that something you’ve been eating is either a miracle food or slowly killing you.

Nutrition doesn’t have to work that way.

Read the ingredients.

Choose whole foods more often.

Pay attention to sourcing when you can.

Recognize that “vegan,” “organic” and “processed” aren’t complete nutritional assessments by themselves.

And don’t turn eating into something you’re afraid to do.

Because improving your diet doesn’t require finding the one perfect way to eat.

It may simply mean making better choices more often—without expecting every choice to be perfect.